This dissertation investigated the perceptions and experiences of online adult language learners in higher education. This was a qualitative study of thirteen women enrolled in online Spanish courses at two south-central Texas institutions of higher education. Three findings emerged. Given the participants’ awareness of the social nature of language and their collective appreciation that language must be practiced orally to be acquired, they took responsibility for their learning by creating their own communities of practice with native Spanish speakers at work and at home. They bore the primary responsibility for their learning and shaped their acquisition contexts to include Spanish experts from their offline communities. This allowed the students to contextualize and personalize their new language knowledge and embody multiple learning roles. Language learning anxiety for these students was not located in the actual online learning tasks, but instead centered on socioculturally constructed understandings about language and their own personal and cultural connections to Spanish. The participants’ revealed the importance they place on demonstrating respect for culture through correct and precise language use. But instead of resulting in a barrier to their learning, the anxiety they experienced may have acted as an impetus in their continued Spanish study. Their insights into the sociocultural influences on language in formal and informal acquisition practices deepen our current understanding of foreign language affect and language learning anxiety. Finally, an in-depth analysis was done on the subgroup of participants identified as heritage language learners. Their belief in the cultural metanarrative of the “proper Tejana” led this group of south-central Texas women to reject the Texas-Spanish dialect, Tex-Mex. The need to acquire proper Spanish and to live linguistically and culturally in two distinct worlds of English and Spanish significantly affected their acquisition processes. The findings offer insights into Spanish learners’ perceptions of online language learning, their affective experiences learning Spanish as an adult, and the sociocultural connections they make to the Spanish language. The implications for future pedagogical design, online and off, are presented.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (Dept. of Psychology) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Hamburg, 2001. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-80).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-106).

This report investigates the amount and types of feedback that are produced on the social language learning site Livemocha.com in response to learners’ written and oral productions. The data are 200 speaking and writing activity submissions with a total of 674 reviewer comments and 1,357 feedback tokens. Feedback is separated into 19 categories which take into account interpersonal communication as well as task-based and grammatical information. More than one-third of all feedback tokens consist of the reviewer encouraging, congratulating, or otherwise offering emotional support to the learner. This strongly indicates that Livemocha.com users are not solely focused on the mechanics of learning languages, but also are creating a welcoming community of practice. / text

Language learning strategies (LLS) have been a popular topic in the SLA literature since their conception by Joan Rubin in 1975. In the beginning, the focus was placed on what constituted an LLS and which learner variables affected strategy use. More recently, the field has moved to the practical application of LLS research: strategy training. Strategy training research has focused on student and teacher beliefs, classroom culture and students’ culture, explicit vs. implicit instruction, and language of instruction and has had largely positive findings. These issues are explored, then made manifest in a review of four popular strategy training models: The CALLA, Oxford, Grenfell and Harris, and SBI. Drawing on the LLS research and these four models, I propose a new model for strategy training: the 6 Steps to Success. As the title indicates, the 6 Steps to Success includes 6 steps: 1) beginning of course assessment/awareness raising; 2) continued assessment of student needs/awareness raising; 3) explicit teaching and modeling; 4) practice; 5) evaluation, 6) end of course evaluation. Five lesson plans are then given to demonstrate the 6 Steps to Success in action. / text

The current study aims to investigate the source(s)of cross linguistic influence(CLI)on the production of future encoding strategies by L1 Cantonese learners of L3 Swedish who speak L2 English. In the literature of third language acquisition (TLA) research, the language status of native and non-native languages as well as genetic and (psycho)typological language distance are identified to be important to TLA processes but the current knowledge is insufficient to inform which factor(s) is/are more influential. Given the close genetic distance between English and Swedish and the status of English as a second language, it is hypothesized that CLI on L3 Swedish comes from L2 English rather than L1 Cantonese. Any confirmation or rejection to this hypothesis serves to inform the relationship of language status and language distance to TLA. To test this hypothesis, linguistic background questionnaire and a picture elicitation task are designed to record the production of future ideas in the three languages. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses, mixed sources of CLI from Cantonese and English are identified. An equidistance representation of non-native languages is also identified in which non-native English and Swedish respectively show similar degree of cross linguistic matching in relation to native Cantonese regardless which of them is the principal source of CLI. The hypothesis of differentiation of linguistic representation in the minds of polyglots is therefore proposed and further verification and investigation is required. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

When revising the curriculum for the Swedish upper secondary school in 2011, language-learning strategies were added to the description of the subject of English. It was also added to the core content and to the grading criteria, which in its turn has added a new dimension to teaching and assessing L2. By problematizing the teachers’ subjective views on assessment of these new criteria, the hypothesis, according to which teachers find assessing language learning strategies, in English 5, difficult, is discussed. Skolverket’s policy documents, the Common European Framework of Reference scale (CEFR scale) and researchers’ findings are compared to the teachers’ views. In order to provide an image of how teachers interpret the new assessment guidelines, and how teachers interpret problems related to assessment, six teachers from different upper secondary schools have been interviewed on their opinions about language-learning strategies. The interviews indicate that even though teachers are positive to the inclusion of language-learning strategies in the course description, the strategies are difficult to detect. One consequence is that the results of strategy use are assessed rather than actual strategy use.

During the past few decades, there has been increasing attention to multimodal adaptive language learning interface design. The purpose of this study was to examine users’ experiences with a chatbot language learning interface through the lens of cognitive emotions and emotions in learning. A particular focus of this study was on users’ interactions with a chatbot in a public setting and in a private environment. Focusing on the event of users’ interaction with a chatbot interface, seventy-five interactions were videotaped in this study, in which fifteen users were asked to interact with the chatbot “Lucy” for their language learning. The video-stimulated post interaction interviews with participants provided complementary data for understanding their experiences with the language learning system. Analysis of twenty-five interactions selected from a total of seventy-five revealed five main factors of chatbot language tutor interface design and their relative significance in the process of users’ meaning making and knowledge construction. Findings showed that users’ sensory, emotional, cultural, linguistic and relational engagement influenced their responses to the chatbot interface, which in turn, shaped their learning processes. Building on a theoretical framework of cognitive emotions and emotions in learning, this study documented users’ language learning processes with the chatbot language learning interface by investigating users’ experiences. The findings and techniques resulting from this study will help designers and researchers achieve a better understanding of users’ experiences with technology and the role of emotions in the processes of learning when using technology and assist them to improve the design of language learning environments.